I have a couple of writing projects in mind, including a love poem and a historical novel. Look out for them in the coming years. The outbreak novel, BIRTHRIGHT (A Luo Tragedy), and an America street literature, MAYA, can be found here.
http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-R.-Alila/e/B002QD5TDM
In the Novel, THE WISE ONE OF RAMOGILAND, Joseph R. Alila addresses the role of spirituality in life and politics in a society under cultural and political transitions. As a battery of ‘colonial forces’ conspire against Africa’s old way of life, wizards and prophets, who are loosing clients of the ordinary kind to New Way Churches, are forced to adopt to the new spiritual reality, even if it means taking funny-sounding Greek names.
In this work of fiction, Alila exposes the work of a woman of wisdom (Angelina Nyangi), her Ramogi people, their ways, their political leadership, and the perils of political cohabitation in Kenya’s young, multiethnic, multiparty democracy.
Nyangi’s lifetime experiences remind the reader that modern religious dispensations might have robbed soothsayers and wizards of a lot of clients of the ordinary kind but not the important ones: She discovers that the new political and business elites love to have their ancestors’ “sixth sense” watching over their backs. She is their ancestors’ sixth sense, only she is no prophet.
Now, in her sunset years, Nyangi reminisces about a life well lived, but one which had seen many antsy professional close calls shared between corrupt politicians and such strange clients as a professor of knowledge. If Angelina’s longevity has become abusive, the unseemly conducts of her eldest son and the supposed “Seer-in-waiting” (Thomas) continues to hang around her neck like a bad dream.
In the novella WHISPER TO MY ACHING HEART, novelist Joseph R. Alila tells a story about two eighteenth-century Luo widows who battle against great odds to become mothers of a future people. In this moving-yet-romantic story, a young widow (Apiny) is the bearer of the damning spiritually untouchable label in the patriarchal African society. Ejected alongside her widowed mother-in-law (Awino) and ridiculed by friends, Apiny waits for fifteen years before she receives another man in her bed. Even then, her moment of triumph comes only after Awino remarries and raises a miracle son (Otin), who answers the call to marry Apiny and redeem his fallen brother’s honor. Even after getting all the handsome sons and beautiful daughters, she wished for from her youthful lover, Apiny is not at peace in her heart. She mourns and struggles, in her heart, as her youthful husband inevitably bows to Luo cultural demands and receives a virgin wife.
In the epic poem, “RATENG’ AND BRIDE,” Joseph R Alila (Author of such novels as “Whisper to My Aching Heart” and Sunset on Polygamy”) pleads with the hero (Rateng’) to abandon a lifelong ambition of reigning in a killer, illusive Bride, and redeeming his honor and Ramogi people’s collective pride.
Of Rateng’s illusive Bride-call her Power, Leadership or The Presidency-Alila reminds his hero of her corrupting, material allure and deadly charms. Like a gem, a Powerful Presidency corrupts everybody it touches, and its corrupting effects linger like the nauseating smell of a scared skunk.
Employing rich imagery and proverbs, and never shy to go Luo vernacular with proverbs, in “RATENG’ AND BRIDE,” Alila has played his satirical hand, again, and demonstrated his knowledge of the political landscape of Kenya.
In the novella WHISPER TO MY ACHING HEART, novelist Joseph R. Alila tells a story about two eighteenth-century Luo widows who battle against great odds to become mothers of a future people. In this moving-yet-romantic story, a young widow (Apiny) is the bearer of the damning spiritually untouchable label in the patriarchal African society. Ejected alongside her widowed mother-in-law (Awino) and ridiculed by friends, Apiny waits for fifteen years before she receives another man in her bed. Even then, her moment of triumph comes only after Awino remarries and raises a miracle son (Otin), who answers the call to marry Apiny and redeem his fallen brother’s honor. Even after getting all the handsome sons and beautiful daughters, she wished for from her youthful lover, Apiny is not at peace in her heart. She mourns and struggles, in her heart, as her youthful husband inevitably bows to Luo cultural demands and receives a virgin wife.
In The Milayi Curse, Joseph R. Alila (the Author of “Sunset on Polygamy”) tells a story about a centuries-old conflict between two ancestral cousins, the Jamokos and Milayis, both members of the Jokamilai—a fictional Luo (Kenyan) clan. The conflict is of a spiritual as well as social nature, with one early Christian Priest (Father James O’Kilghor) struggling to make sense of an alien culture and reconcile the Jokamilai. It is a tale about spirituality, honor, betrayal, pride, poverty, wealth and uneasy kinship in fast-changing times, with Christianity and formal education breaking class barriers, bursting myths, and “turning things upside down.”
Charles Milayi, a poor orphan, graduates out of middle school with excellent grades. Just when his widowed mother (Consolata Milayi) has lost hope of her gifted son ever stepping into a high school, he becomes a beneficiary of “a secret enemy hand of providence” only known to Father James. Father James protects the identity of Milayi’s benefactor because a Jamoko publicly sponsoring a Milayi child could unsettle many souls on either side of the unhealthy blood divide in Jokamilai, more so because the benefactor’s son (Thomas Jamoko) cannot graduate out of middle school.
Charles Milayi excels in his studies, joins college, and becomes a lawyer, a businessperson, and a cabinet minister. Having broken through the economic class barrier, Charles marries none other than the Prime Minister’s daughter. However, back home, Hon. Milayi’s people remain bitterly divided along bloodlines, thanks to the century-old curse with origins in old wars, pillage of war spoils, and ancestral wealth. The so-called “Milayi curse” feeds a social schism and spiritual war blamed on the unsettled spirit of a fallen war hero named Milayi Raburu.
The endless cold war among ancestral cousins has made Father James O’Kilghor’s ministry to the Jokamilai a trying experience, even for a man known for his controversial “Africanized-evangelizing strategies” that allow active traditional priests and witch doctors to receive baptism.
In the novella WHISPER TO MY ACHING HEART, novelist Joseph R. Alila tells a story about two eighteenth-century Luo widows who battle against great odds to become mothers of a future people. In this moving-yet-romantic story, a young widow (Apiny) is the bearer of the damning spiritually untouchable label in the patriarchal African society. Ejected alongside her widowed mother-in-law (Awino) and ridiculed by friends, Apiny waits for fifteen years before she receives another man in her bed. Even then, her moment of triumph comes only after Awino remarries and raises a miracle son (Otin), who answers the call to marry Apiny and redeem his fallen brother’s honor. Even after getting all the handsome sons and beautiful daughters, she wished for from her youthful lover, Apiny is not at peace in her heart. She mourns and struggles, in her heart, as her youthful husband inevitably bows to Luo cultural demands and receives a virgin wife.
Here the man who set Kenya on a path to reform with justice. He is Justice Waki of the famous Waki Commission Report on 2007 Post-Election Violence. He is the common Kenyans’ man of the century.
http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/InsidePage.php?id=2000036696&cid=4&
While high on an oath Atieno just administered, Okulu critically wounds Aura, his stepmother. Then Okulu turns his rage on his stepbrother, Juma, Odongo’s spiritual first son. In a twist of instant justice, Okulu’s blind rage turns tragic, as he loses the function of both hands after Grace, Juma’s dog, bites him off a rabbit carcass.
The same night, Juma is running for his life, he rescues a young woman from a quagmire. But she is the metaphorical untouchable pearl he never would touch, for she is his stepsister.
If Owinyo and five of the Odongo daughter should come out as the peacemaker in this novel, Then Abich must join her mother and Okulu as the bad trio. But sometimes good things happen to bad people; Abich reaps a abundantly from her notoriety, when she captures a “mentionable” new husband amid the tragic drama to have visited Thim Lich in her time.
BIRTHRIGHT (A Luo Tragedy) unfolds within the context of a polygamous marriage in a traditional African home, which is a religious institution with social and spiritual bounds. When husband and wives breach the rules, the tragic conflicts like what befell the Odongo home are the more probable. BIRTHRIGHT should be judged alongside great literary works worldwide.
http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-R.-Alila/e/B002QD5TDM
